Protection Paladin Tank Stat Priority — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

On this page, you will find out the optimal stat priority for your Protection Paladin. We first present
the stat priority, before delving into more complex explanations. Our content is updated for
World of Warcraft — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1.

1. The Basics of Stats for Protection Paladin

Defensively, the stat priority for Protection Paladins are as follows:

Haste;

Mastery;

Versatility;

Critical Strike.

It is important to take into account that Haste, Mastery, and Versatility
are all extremely close in terms of value, and item level is by far the most
important aspect of gear upgrades. In most cases this stat priority is only
really useful comparing when you have two items of the same item level.

2. Getting a Better Understanding of Protection Paladin Stats

2.1. Statistics Explanations

Haste reduces your global cooldown and the cooldowns of most of the
abilities that are part of your rotation. Haste's main task is to increase
Shield of the Righteous uptime, to generally smooth damage intake
and make you more predictable to heal. There is no Haste cap and there is no
reason to not keep stacking it.

Mastery, thanks to Mastery: Divine Bulwark, increases your
chance to block attacks and your attack power, as well as increasing the
damage reduction you get from standing in your
Consecration. It works similar to Versatility since
it is straight up damage reduction but also increases damage and healing
done, but due to increased attack power. It simply outperforms Versatility
due to increasing block chance as well.

Versatility increases all damage and healing done as well as
reducing damage taken. Versatility gives you slightly more damage reduction
per point than Mastery and it will also be active outside of
Consecration. However, it is not as strong as
Mastery due to missing out on block chance as well.

Critical Strike increases your damage and healing output,
and also gives you Parry, as you get 1 Parry from for every 1 point of
Critical Strike. Critical Strike does very little for you defensively, while
Judgment critical hits increase Shield of the Righteous
uptime, and critical strike giving you parry, these effects are very minimal
and too random to rely on. Light of the Protector is also able to
critically strike which almost guarantees a full heal, however unreliable
outside of Avenging Wrath. Offensively, it is a
great stat, however.

Against most encounters you need to have a decent
amount of health, in order to give yourself the chance to be healed before a
subsequent attack kills you. In addition to this minimum amount of
Stamina, we feel that Stamina remains quite valuable for Protection
Paladins. However, most of your Stamina is innately found on your gear, but
it is always a good option to have additional Stamina available, should it
temporarily be necessary through trinkets, enchants, and gemming (in that
order). As you become more comfortable determining the amount of
survivability needed for each encounter, you can shift some of that Stamina
into other stats.

3. Changelog

10 Dec. 2018: This page has been reviewed for Patch 8.1 and no changes are necessary.

13 Aug. 2018: Updated for Battle for Azeroth launch.

09 Aug. 2018: Added paragraph below stat priority.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This guide has been written by Treckie,
a long-time leading Protection Paladin who competed for world first kills for 5
years. He currently raids in NollTvåTre
and has been a caster and an analyst of Blizzard's Mythic Dungeon
Invitational. You can watch his stream on Twitch and you can follow him on Twitter.